My mantra over the years is that Google is winning by building an infrastructure that is hard, if not impossible, for the others to match. All these companies have good sales teams I’m sure. As your graph shows they all made more money year after year. But I have a feeling that the data centers of the others (at MSN and AOL particularly) would have never been able to match what Google has done without significant user dissatisfaction (downtime and poor response).
The grand irony is that after Gates ordered all non-Windows servers be eliminated from MS data centers, they are once again going to rely on Unix to get the job done.
If the deal goes through and they keep the Unix servers it will be a huge admission of defeat for Windows Server. On the other hand if they spend the resources to convert everything it’s hard to imagine how they come out ahead profit-wise.
MS has put itself on a treadmill of fail.
What MS badly needs is not a new acquisition, but new blood at the top. Bill needs to start telling Steve how good life in retirement is… quickly!
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
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Comments
My mantra over the years is that Google is winning by building an infrastructure that is hard, if not impossible, for the others to match. All these companies have good sales teams I’m sure. As your graph shows they all made more money year after year. But I have a feeling that the data centers of the others (at MSN and AOL particularly) would have never been able to match what Google has done without significant user dissatisfaction (downtime and poor response).
The grand irony is that after Gates ordered all non-Windows servers be eliminated from MS data centers, they are once again going to rely on Unix to get the job done.
If the deal goes through and they keep the Unix servers it will be a huge admission of defeat for Windows Server. On the other hand if they spend the resources to convert everything it’s hard to imagine how they come out ahead profit-wise.
MS has put itself on a treadmill of fail.
What MS badly needs is not a new acquisition, but new blood at the top. Bill needs to start telling Steve how good life in retirement is… quickly!
Posted by Mac Beach at April 11th, 2008 at 10:26 am